Loads Of Journalists, Few Believers In The Only Town Expected To Survive The Apocalypse

The
Daily Telegraph's France correspondent Henry Samuel meets new
agers and grumpy journalists in the one place predicted to
survive the apocalypse

If the legend is true and the sleepy southern French
town of Bugarach is the only place standing after the apocalypse,
the Earth will be populated by 150 policemen, some on horseback,
250 frustrated journalists from around the world and 198 very
bewildered villagers.

A huge, global internet conspiracy theory suggests this "doomsday
village", with its curious "upside down" mountain offers
protection against the end of the world supposedly predicted by
the Mayan calendar for approximately 11.21GMT Friday.

The theory goes that the mountain is in fact a vast underground
car park for UFOs, and only those within spitting distance of the
mount stand a chance of jumping on board.

By the afternoon, with only hours to go before the world's
supposed final curtain, intergalactic hitch hikers were few and
far between and tempers were fraying among reporters flown in
from as far as China in the hunt for elusive esoterics.

"Beam me up froggy," sighed one British journalist.

Any true "believers" bold enough to try to tackle the 4,035ft
climb to the peak of Pic de Bugarach in heavy drizzle first had
to get past cohorts of police stationed in roadblocks around the
village. Only visitors with press or village passes were allowed
in.

Once inside, the route to the top remained equally daunting, with
Le Pic protected by an elite gendarme mountain unit, while
another team of police potholers scoured its myriad underground
caverns to succour any hapless New Agers lost underground.

Some did make it however.

Frédéric, 28, an unemployed waiter from Marseille squinted
determinedly at the cloud-shrouded peak with a tent and rucksack
on his back.

"I must be up there between midday and two o'clock on Friday," he
said earnestly, his brother Laurent, 35, by his side.

"A ray of sunlight will pass by all the planets aligned to the
sun and into the rock. At that moment, a passage, a window will
open up an inter-dimensional vortex," he insisted.

"There is a hole the other side of the summit, about knee height,
and we will sit in it. If the passage opens we will pass into
another dimension," he said.

He said he had initially expected 200,000 people to turn up
today, but admitted that might be an exaggeration.

A little further down the main street, Sylvain Dufir, 44, or
"Oriana", his cosmic name, was equally persuasive in revealing
the "true meaning of the apocalypse".

"There will be no end of the world, no cataclysm, but a
revelation," he said with a knowing smile. "On Friday, all
humanity will go through a sort of internal alchemy, a revolution
inside our cells so we can be at one with the golden light of
divine love," he said.

"The feeling will be like 10,000 orgasms," he insisted. "Bring it
on," said a passing French youth.

As for Bugarach, he added: "Flying saucers do enter the mountain
but they are much too fast to be photographed." With trapped
journalists in need of sustenance, Patrice Etienne, who runs an
organic grocery, was doing a roaring trade serving food and
drink, including a Bugarach "End of the World Vintage", said to
"peak in December 2012".

He remained sceptical about the doomsday plot, but added:
"There's no smoke without fire."

"They speak of the end of the world to put us off the scent. But
the army, which is secretly sending spy planes up there at night,
is getting ready for something equally serious," he claimed.

Sceptical journalists were the main obstacle to solving the
riddle of the mount, he claimed. "We want help from Russians and
Japanese scientists, experts with material open to such
phenomena," he said.

Moving into the quiet backstreets, some villagers were scathing
of the spectacle.

Muttering as he opened his front door, Alain Jany, 53, a retired
soldier, grumbled: "I'm starting to wonder whether I'm the only
sane person and everyone else is mad, or the reverse." "It
reminds me of a disaster movie or some kind of conflict. All you
see in our village are journalists and gendarmes. Usually they
come when there's something to cover, like a war, a murder. But
what are they all waiting for here? Nothing! I've been up that
peak 50,0000 times and have never seen a thing. It's rubbish," he
said.

Sitting calmly in her kitchen a dozen yards down the road,
Valerie Austin, a retired music teacher from Northumberland,
sighed: "The circus has come to town."

"On French local radio this morning, the joke was:"I feel sorry
for the spaceship, they obviously have no idea what the price of
petrol is around here."

"You've got to see the funny side, but it's been a roller
coaster."

Further out of the village, Susie Harrison, 50, a New Ager who
moved from Glastonbury to Bugarach 10 years ago, was putting the
finishing touches to a mashed potato mountain reminiscent of the
one from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

While she said there was definitely "something special" about the
mountain she doubted the world would end, but had a friend who
did. He had a problem, however.

"Ian left the village to buy clean underpants for the occasion
and now the police won't let him back in, so he's very annoyed. I
might have to go and rescue him," she said.